Responding to a request made by Gov. Jim Doyle, the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Employment Relations approved a plan that would exclude legislators and constitutional officers from the 2.5 percent pay raise non-unionized state employees received for the 2001-’03 budget cycle.

The committee voted Monday to approve the pay raise included in the non-unionized employees’ contracts. Because the contracts took almost two years to be approved by the committee, the raises will be paid retroactively to the employees.

“We shouldn’t be talking about pay increases for legislators and the governor when we have a $3.2 billion deficit to balance,” Doyle said in a release Monday. Doyle had asked Department of Employment Relations Secretary Karen Timberlake to recommend to the committee that the pay increases be foregone.

Aaron Nuutinen, spokesman for committee member Rep. Jim Kreuser, D-Kenosha, said that Kreuser had voted to keep the pay raises out of the non-unionized employee contracts when they first came to a vote in February.

“[Kreuser] voted in favor of getting rid of the raise for legislators, and he was one of only two people on the committee who did the first time around,” Nuutinen said.

Doyle had announced in January that he would not take the $9,362 pay raise he was scheduled to receive for this fiscal year, and many important members of his Cabinet would also decline raises this year in light of the state’s financial situation.

“I have asked that my Cabinet secretaries return any difference between their salaries and the salaries of their predecessors,” Doyle said at the time. “We are asking all of state government to cut back, and my appointees have to lead by example.”

Some state legislators had also declined the 3 percent pay raises budgeted for them during the 2001-’03 biennium starting in January, when the grimness of the state’s budget become apparent.

“At a time when we are asking local governments, state workers, businesses and families to tighten their belts, I feel state legislators should do the same,” Rep. Terri McCormick, R-Appleton, said as she declined her raise.

Doyle ordered Timberlake to offer the recommendation that incoming negotiations for non-unionized employees for the 2003-’05 budget cycle legislators offer employees a 0 percent raise in 2004 and a 1 percent raise in 2005. A 0 percent increase would be given to constitutional officers, which include the state’s governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state and treasurer.

“I am pleased that we have been able to work together with the Legislature on this issue,” Doyle said. “This will send a strong signal to all of our employees that we appreciate their efforts and that we are serious about balancing the budget the right way.”

The Associated Press reported Monday that 53 of the state’s 132 legislators had declined their pay raises initially, a small majority of 60 percent. Those lawmakers who did not will be forced to if the committee-approved contracts pass a full Legislature vote, which is expected Tuesday.